I guess I'm just not into the devil thing.

I have given up on the Satanic Versus. Here's why:

It was around the time Chamcha was just beginning his transformation into the devil, horns had appeared and his body was suspiciously goat-like. Specifically, though, it was the time just after he was arrested and forced to eat his own goat-like poo pellets that I was like -- I'm going to barf.

All day long, I sweat over commas, hyphens (particularly the modifying kind), words like revitalizing and rejuvenating (which some of you may not know mean completely different things), and whether my work laptop is going to get stolen after I leave for the night. So, when I'm on stinky, delayed, horrendous Muni with a brain that's been chopped into a million pieces over the last, oh, 10 to 12 hours, the last thing I want to read about is someone being forced to eat their own shit. Sorry, but I just can't do it. (That scene is Trainspotting when Ewan McGregor dives into the toilet still kind of gets to me. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.)

And the thing is, if you know me, then you know that I'm not really into "light" reading either. I did read Eat, Pray, Love, but I hated it, apparently along with everyone else who read it, so how the hell did it get so f'ing big is my question. Oprah. Oh yeah, it was Oprah. So anyway, I like to read big torturous things just as much as the next word dork, but I can't seem to get into this book. And it's like the best book ever written, right? (Gawd I hate how saying "right?" after everything has creeped into our language, and now I feel old because this is probably how "adults" felt when "like" made its way into our vocab. Anyway.)


I did enjoy the research I had to do in order to even make it past the first 100 pages. I'm embarrassed to admit this, oh well what the hell, but I really didn't know the story of Muhammad beforehand. I was totally lost when it came to Allat, Uzza and Manat. I knew about the book's historical importance and the controversy, but I, like many other kids who went to California public schools (sorry to all my teacher friends), was pretty sheltered from most of that growing up and I hate to say it, but was not really encouraged to look at the world outside of our one-story house.



Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer says the book is "brilliantly enjoyable" -- or so says the quote attributed to her on the cover of the copy I have. I'm fully willing to admit that it's me. I'm just not Rushdie caliber I suppose.

Thoughts?

Mr. Irving, it's not you, it's me.

I love John Irving. But do I love him enough to continue suffering through "A Widow for One Year"? I just don't know.

I'm about halfway through the 1998 novel about Ruth Cole and her screwed up family. The writing nearly gave me a migraine yesterday. The narrator jumps between the past, present and future in just about every train of thought that I don't know where the hell we are half the time.

I'm criticizing John Irving? I know, I'm totally. fricking. out. of. my. mind.

I of course loved the World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany and well I really liked the Cider House Rules movie. I consider him one of my lifetime's true great storytellers. Like Tom Wolf, Michael Chabon and T.C. Boyle. They weave together these amazing characters and plots layered upon plots until they peak and you're sitting there feeling high from it and thinking how did he do that????? I know that's really dorky, but I know you know what I mean.

A Widow for One Year was a bestseller. No doubt. But is that because it came from the person who wrote this?:

"... it was what a summer wedding should be -- sultry, something momentarily pretty, giving way to a heat that is unrestrained. Uncle Alfred showed off for me and my cousins by chugging beer. A stray beagle, belonging to some new people on Pine Street, made off with some of the cupcakes from the coffee and dessert table. Mr. Meany, standing so stiffly in-waiting at the receiving line that he appeared to have granite in his pockets, blushed when it was his turn to kiss the bride."

Genius.

So I've read, and I say that because I was born in the late '70s, that the World According to Garp was the book to be read in the '70s and '80s. In 1998 one critic said a Widow for One Year could possibly be the book to be read in the '90s. Bridget Jones's Diary came out in 1998 and Angela's Ashes in 1996. So, that critic could be right.

I stopped reading today when I did because I wanted to check out some reviews of a Widow for One Year. I wanted to see if anybody who knows anything had experienced the same thing. I was hoping I'd find a review that said: Mr. Irving hits his stride in the second half of the book. I did not find that. All I found was praise for it.

I think this is a case of It's not you, it's me. Maybe I am just not in the mood for a novel about love and loss. Shame on me, the title was a dead give away.

I also think that maybe you just need a break from what you're reading sometimes. Because in the last few hours I've found myself wondering about Ruth Cole.

I'll let you know what happens.

Dr. Gonzo. Raoul Duke. HST.

Hunter S. Thompson. One of my all-time favorite writers.

He once typed the Great Gatsby from beginning to end. “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.” Just like that until the very end. Reading it wasn’t enough for him to learn the rhythm. (He was of course on something, but weren’t they all?)

He used to call up his friends at all hours of the night and just start rambling. They’d always take the call, too. They’ve said getting a call at 4 in the morning when Hunter was alive was a joy. Now it just marks a tragedy.

I watched the 2006 documentary “Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride” last week. It was a decent film. It had some nuggets and old footage that I had never heard or seen before. It made me laugh and it made me miss him.

Ralph Steadman, the artist and Hunter’s partner in crime, was in it. Tim and I saw Ralph speak about four years ago when he was on tour for his book, “The Joke’s Over.” We sat in metal folding chairs lined up in a school’s basement on Oak street.

Ralph had a slideshow of old photos. He played recordings of Hunter. He did an impression of him, too. It was about a year and a half after Hunter died. We bought two signed copies of the book and then devoured it within a couple of days.

They met while on assignment covering the Kentucky Derby in 1970, which resulted in the piece, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” Ralph didn’t know he was going to be part of making the story. You know, Gonzo.

Their first meeting as told by Ralph in the British newspaper “The Independent:”

“I had been watching someone chalk racing results on a blackboard while I sipped a beer, and I was about to turn and get myself another when a voice like no other I had ever heard cut into my thoughts and sank its teeth into my brain. It was a cross between a slurred Karate chop and gritty molasses.

‘Um . . . er you . . . er . . . wouldn't be from England . . . er . . . would you . . . er . . . an artist . . . maybe . . . er . . . what the!!’

I had turned around and two fierce eyes, firmly socketed inside a bullet-shaped head, were staring at a strange growth I was nurturing on the end of my chin. ‘Holy shit!’ he exclaimed. ‘They said I was looking for a matted-haired geek with string warts and I guess I've found him.’”

The rest is all art and magic.

Check out the famous Lizard Lounge from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” here for $3,000:

http://tinyurl.com/y9nhx4h

Will work for ... well ... work.

The job hunt continues for Alexandria Ann Rocha.

This time last year, the major corporation I worked for closed its West Coast division, leaving me and 1,400 of my colleagues without jobs. Across the nation, the number was even more staggering: 7,000 people who worked for Macy’s lost their jobs, from east to west, and north to south.

My mom was already in the process of losing her home to foreclosure. The layoff was the second time the Great Recession hit close to home.

Since then, I have managed to maintain my career, freelancing a long stint at the cosmetics company Bare Escentuals, then landing a permanent position on a consumer technology account at a marketing services agency.

Last week, my company announced that it was losing the account, which it has had for seven years. I have heard that seven years is nearly unheard of in the agency world.

If you have been following the tech business, you might know that certain consumer technology brands are undergoing massive changes to keep their footing with the competition. As it was with Macy’s, it’s a business decision and part of a larger strategy to keep the company from going under. I get it. But it doesn’t make it suck any less.

So once again I find myself looking for the next big thing. By “big thing,” I mean the next big thing for me.

When I transitioned from journalism to advertising 2 1/2 years ago, I was worried about leaving something I was seriously passionate about. What I found at Macy’s, in the work and in the coworkers, was something I truly cared about. It was devastating to lose both. At Bare Escentuals, again, I found the same thing. I was just getting started at the agency.

I am not afraid to write about this because it is the truth and it is turning into my story. In January, 10% of Americans were unemployed, according to the BLS. For a lot of us, it is not a reflection of the work we do and have produced. I know that is not the case for me.

My mom always gets goosebumps when I talk about changing jobs. So does my father-in-law. We don’t even tell him about certain job-related issues because we know it will stress him out. Their generations prided themselves on job longevity. My mom, in fact, is dating a man who has been at the same job for 45 years. It’s the first job he had after graduating from high school. My grandmother and aunts, and of course my mom, are thrilled about this. He’s stable, they say.

For us, this is unthinkable. If you’re not moving, you’re not learning or growing. If you haven’t worked within all areas of your industry, then forget it.

But now, I am finding it difficult to keep a job for even a single year. Employees seem so much more disposable now.

So here I am, putting my hat in the ring yet again. I’m looking for the right place, not just any place, to hang my hat for a while.

And by that, I mean at least a couple of years.

2 bdrms/1 bth, laundry, parking, heat. Please?

Wow. Finding a new place to live is straight up exhausting. Seriously, I think my stress levels hiked to the top of Mt. Tam last week and forgot to take me along, which sucks because that would have been really cool.

We have lived in our little place in SF's Inner Sunset district for about five years. It's a super duper apartment, right next to Golden Gate Park and just blocks away from tons of restaurants and watering holes. It has all the sunlight of a greenhouse, beautiful hardwood floors and a remodeled kitchen. And, jeez, it's above an ice cream shop -- how cool is that?!

When we found it, we knew right away that it was the place for us. Then after we moved in, we thought we made a huge mistake. The street noise was nearly unbearable. We could hear women walking in heals, skateboarders, dogs howling and people going home from the bars at 2 a.m. That's not to mention the firehouse two blocks away, the registers constantly dinging at the grocery store across the street and the 8 a.m. prayers over the loudspeaker at the adjacent Catholic school.

Somehow we got used to the noise. I now find some of the more distant city noises comforting.

Then came the winter. Yes, it's California, but that just means we are not prepared. The apartment has no working heat system and the windows are those old sliding, double-hung panes that have no insulation. I can see my breath when I'm getting ready in the morning, and it's annoying because it fogs up my mirror.

Again, we have somehow made this work.

However, it is time for an upgrade. The four things on my must-have list:

1. Central heat/insulated windows (This is just a standard of living.)

2. Parking (I cannot put up the good fight any longer.)

3. On site laundry (A homeless guy's tightie whities hitching a ride in my washer a few weeks ago was the last straw.)

4. Two bedrooms (I'm old enough to provide my guests with a bed.)

At first we were considering another place in the same neighborhood. Then we thought it might be cool to live closer to the beach. Now we're thinking of moving out of the city altogether, to a little place up north called San Rafael. Awesome downtown and it's closer to wine country.

However, finding a place with all four must-haves seems to be nearly impossible in our price range. Most apartments we've seen have three of the four, with parking and laundry as the wild cards. Then there is the weird sense of competition. Every landlord is like, "Oh! There's a couple just like you with a 1-year-old and they really liked it a lot, too! Better get your application in quick!"

Damn couples with 1 year olds.

Anyway, the search continues. And maybe February isn't the best time to move. After all, longer days and 70-degree weather in the city are just around the corner.

Never try to be a bartender ... if you're not a bartender

I met the CEO of Zola Acai at a bar in Yosemite during Thanksgiving Day weekend. Zola Acai, you ask? A bar in Yosemite?

We stayed at a place called the Evergreen Lodge. It's located on Highway 120 past the town of Groveland and mere miles from the west entrance to the park. We stayed in our own little cabin and there was a rustic restaurant and a good ol' boy bar onsite.

It snowed the first night we were there. A light dusting that was just enough to get our Christmas spirits going. We sat on our little cabin porch outfitted with Adirondock chairs and drank a bottle of wine, checking out the flakes. Then we moseyed down to the bar for dinner and drinks.

Two bar stools, a coupla beers, lasagna for me and a burger for Tim were keeping us quite satisfied. The band, whose name was something like "Mountain High," was setting up in the back.

I don't know how the conversation started, but we ended up awkwardly chatting with a couple that was not older, but simply older than ourselves. The guy had the black-dyed hair thing going on and the woman had the blond-dyed hair thing going on. Nobody asked him, but the guy promptly told us he was the CEO of Zola Acai. It's a Brazilian superfoods health drink that, um, will not keep your hair from turning gray, apparently.

Hmm, never heard of it.

Well aren't you lucky? They sell it here at the Evergreen Lodge bar. Yippee!!!

Two Zola Acais were now sitting in front of our mostly finished plates. We cracked them open. Took swigs. Then proceeded to try and conceal our bitter beer faces. God damn this just has to get awkward, doesn't it?

It's GRRRR-eaaaattt!! Smiles all around.

How about you make me a martini with this here Zola Acai?

Did that just come out of my mouth? Yes. It. Did.

Two purple, somewhat nutty, chunky Zola Acai martinis coming right up. CEO thought it was crazy, of course, but was dying to know if I had just tapped into something new.

Tim's ZA concoction flew down his throat so fast he didn't even taste it. Mine, well I can't do that, so I sipped it. Slowly. Not good.

Then I started to try and sell my freelance copywriting services ... because I have freelance copywriting services. Yeah.

Anyway, the CEO felt so bad that my (his?) drink tasted so bad that he ordered me a different one.

Anyway, Yosemite did not disappoint, even if the Zola Acai did.

Here's to much awkward chitchatting with strangers and old acquaintances this holiday season. Cheers!

Shoes, and a pretty good case to hold onto your cash this holiday season

A message about things. Considering the holidays are upon us, I figured it's an appropriate topic.

I didn't plan on it, but I conducted an interesting experiment last night. Feeling like a little closet organization was in order, I bought two shoe organizing things at Ross yesterday. One is a typical shoe rack, the other is one of those nifty cubbie things that hang from the closet rod.

I cleared out the boxes of shoes stacked up, some seven high, and the loose pairs collecting dust in a folding metal contraption. I found shoes I bought for special occasions, like weddings and bachelorette parties (including my own), that I only wore once. There was a pair of boots that treated me damn well during a 4-day vacation to Chicago last winter but haven't been worn since. There was a sequined pair I bought in Vietnam that look like someone left them at Studio 54 after a long night.

Black cowboy boots. Adidas ballet flats. Chacos. American flag-printed Vans.

Now, this is a collection that has been building for years. Except for the four or five pairs I bought during an amazing Macy's One-Day Sale (we know them well, right guys?) for 100 bucks total, these shoes have been purchased carefully throughout my existence. Like I said, some for trips, some on trips.

After I tucked them all away, I counted them. I own 51 pairs of shoes.

I know this isn't Mariah Carey style. I do not buy super expensive shoes in the first place. The most expensive ones are Michael Kors and they were about $120 at the Nordstrom Half Yearly Sale. And -- this is a big "and" -- a lot of these shoes were bought for $1 to $5 at the oh-so awesome Macy's employee shoe sample sales, which used to make me giddy with delight and my friends who wear size 7 mad with rage. The models wore sizes 6 and 9. I am a size 6.

A lot, however, were frivolous buys. I'll admit it.

Fifty-one pairs of shoes? That's insane. Want to know what's even more insane? When I need a pair for yet another special occasion, I usually consult someone else's stock, meaning the store's.

Truth be told, I used to be a whole lot worse and have scaled back a bunch in the past two to three years. So these are the remains of a bad habit of purchases past.

It's an important thing to think about, though. Especially when the holidays this year are going to be so tough for so many people. What will truly make you and your family happy these holidays? It probably won't be another thing that will end up -- maybe not soon, but some day -- in a cubbie.

Spoken from someone without kids, right? Good luck out there this year, guys. Just remember to ask yourself, do I (or they) really need this?

..........

(BTW, the shoes in the pic are chocolate.)

Chico State halloween: A trip down memory lane.

Let me state the obvious: tomorrow is Halloween. Here's something even more obvious: I'm getting in the spirit.

(Jeez, this is even my second blog about it.)

People who have spent time around me this time of year know I can go a little overboard for this particular holiday. I have sewn, glued and painted my way into a sequined mermaid, Queen of Hearts, Minnie Mouse, Marge Simpson and flapper costumes. I have forced friends to watch It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. (They totally liked it.) And have truly out partied the heartiest of partiers. I'm still hungover from 1999. More on that later.

Sadly, this has all died down in the past few years. And frankly it's making me feel old. I'm in this weird in-between stage where half of my friends have kids and go trick or treating and the other half live in apartments and would rather go to a bar than throw a "house party," er, apartment party.

This year, I'm attempting to bring back some of the fun from the old days.

Of course nothing will top the impromptu party that hatched on the front lawn of my house at 812 W. First St. near the Chico State campus, yes, in 1999.

It all started with a few friends drinking Sierra Nevada before heading out into the streets. A friend arrived as a backpacker with a cylinder keg in his backpack, the tap coming around his shoulder like a camelback.

For some reason, hordes of people arrived. No joke, a guy started eating and blowing fire on the lawn. We were like, This is amazing. Then our dear friend in a Tootsie-like wig and a neon leotard with the letter "Q" on his chest (going as "Q-Man, naturally) performed an elaborate gymnastics routine on the 2nd-floor balcony for the crowd.

That was just at my little house. Heading out into the streets, my roommate, dressed as Ted Kaczynski in ridiculously bad-taste form, accidentally bumped his 6-foot-4 frame into a tiny female cop. Someone, dressed and acting as a tourist, snapped a poloroid of the collision and stuffed it into his pocket. He discovered it the next day. An entire group of students performed the Thriller dance throughout the streets. The Simpsons cruised around.

This was Chico State before they clamped down on the Halloween fun. Some of my older colleagues might have even better tales during the Pioneer Days run, which ended in the late '80s.

So this year, I'm bringing back the Halloween spirit. There will be ... well, black vodka cocktails, of course. Although I don't know where to get black vodka just yet. I'm hoping BevMo has some in stock. Possibly Mollie Stones. And there will be costumes. Can't tell you what just yet, but I will say this: all you need is love.

So be safe and stay out of jail tomorrow night, guys.

Can you get pregnant from ... oh, just read it!

So I visited an urgent care facility this afternoon. I had to go because I'm a fool and have not learned to navigate the provider network of my new insurance. Thus, no primary care physician. And damn it, I got a sore throat.

I got there at about 4:45 and the place was empty. The only patients were a couple of peeps whom the staff knew by name. I was pretty confident I'd get in and out quickly with either a lolli or a prescription. I was fine with both. I needed to go into the weekend knowing if I was dealing with something serious. Say, tonsillitis.

So I'm sitting in the room, which the NP posted a "DR. WEISENBERG: NEXT!" sign on. Cute, I thought, a little road map for the doc. I fielded a couple of texts from a friend in need of SF hotel advice.

Coupla minutes pass and the doc comes in, checks out the EN&T situation. He says it looks like I'm fine, just a minor case of "under the weather."

"But, we'll give you a throat culture for strep just in case."

Ok, I'm cool with that. I've had them before.

Turns out the strep test has gone the way of the pregnancy test. Bear with me now.

The doc in the hallway: "Erika! I hear you -- what's the word now -- volunteered to give a culture in room 2D." (That's not really something I wanted to hear, but oh well.)

The nurse comes dragging ass in, rolling the blood pressure machine in with her. "Feeling sick?"

The rubber gloves come on. "This is going to be really uncomfortable and it's going to feel like you're going to throw up. But try not to."

"OK."

Afterward, she pulls out a little plastic white stick, sticks the throat swab in it and sets it on the counter. "Now we have to wait five minutes. I'll be right back."

Shuts the door.

What the hell is that little thing on the desk? Is that an EPT? I see a single blue line start to appear in the "window." Wow, that's a far cry from when they took the "results" away from the patient and then called you at home or made you wait a few hours in the lab. WTF?

While I was sitting there I saw a printout tacked to the wall reading "Medication shapes and colors." There was a spearmint tic tac, a blue eraser and a white original iPod shuffle.

Coulda done without seeing that.

Then I read the flu shot poster: "Don't forget to ask for your orange lollipop after your flu shot -- while supplies last!"

While supplies last?

At this point, I was not feeling so ready to see the results of my pregnancy test.

Doc walks in, looks down at the plastic stick. "No strep!" he beams.

I had told him earlier I was taking ibuprofen for the pain.

"Now, about that ibuprofen," he says, his eyes level with mine. "Need anything stronger?"

It was like I was back at Chico State, in the student health center, where vicodin flew off the shelves and all you had to say was, "I can't sleep, therefore, I can't study." (I never did that btw.)

"No, but thanks. Really, thank you."

Did I just say thank you to the doc for a prescription that I turned down? Yeah, I guess I did. Twice. And smarter people would say I was a fool.

Sincerity as far as the eye can see

Is anyone else completely freaked out that it's fall already?

I guess for those of you with children, it's not really that big of a deal since back-to-school was like so yesterday. But, for those of us without, the coming of fall is like ... I don't know ... it's like something new is happening.

I know New Year's brings the sense of a fresh start to a lot of people . New Year's Eve is actually my BFF's favorite holiday for that reason. It's not like her life slowly degrades over the course of every 12 months, but it's the energy and feeling of hope a new year brings her that makes this holiday so exciting.

For me, that feeling comes in the fall. I call myself a summer person, but I get a little giddy when the days get colder and shorter. I love sweaters and boots and comfort food. Maybe I have a little black bear in me, but I love staying warm inside with a glass of wine and a pile of magazines, a lamp softly lighting every room and the tube glowing and going unnoticed in the corner. Everything seems that much better. Like eating chocolate with three layers on, because you're already all covered up.

This love of fall was probably instilled in me from a very young age. My parents packed up the car every October and headed to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. Because my family didn't eat at restaurants, we tailgated at the beach and ate my mom's cold fried chicken and macaroni salad for lunch. Then we wandered the arts and crafts booths, peered in the window at the caramel-making shop and watched the parade. I was always, and still am, frankly, afraid of the people in stilts.

My mom made me and my sister's baby and toddler clothes and she made our Halloween costumes up until about the sixth-grade. We started the planning about a month early. I do not remember going to the fabric store, but I remember her brown sewing box with the cracked lid and her sitting at the kitchen table sewing away. Snow white, a gray mouse, a witch, a butterfly. The last requiring more wire and glue than thread. She taught me how to sew, and I made a Minnie Mouse costume my sophomore year in college. She probably wouldn't have approved. (It was more diva than Disney.)

Nowadays, Tim and I make a date to go to the pumpkin patch every year. I watch It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown as if it was a State of the Union address. I threw a cookie decorating party last year for my copywriter friends and made five dozen ghost, tombstone, pumpkin and black cat sugar cookies that we frosted and sprinkled. This year there will be pumpkin lights.

So I guess all there is left to say is, go ahead, buy that bag of mini Reese's peanut butter cups, drink some Oktoberfest beer and start dreaming of the pumpkin pie to come.

It will make you so happy.

The master of show, don't tell

My first T.C. Boyle experience: Drop City, first published in 2003.

Very quickly: this book is about a hippie commune that gets run out of the SF Bay Area and tries to live off the land in Alaska.

Not so quickly: Something started happening to me after the first 100 pages or so of this book. I began to feel like I had read it before, like I had walked through the original Drop City house in Sonoma County, smoked cigarettes with Star and Merry and rode in their Merry Pranksters-like bus. Some of it could have been flashbacks to my Phish-following, camp-counseling college days, but mostly it was just this unbelievable familiarity Boyle created that brought this on. (Aside: I have since watched a bit of that movie The Beach that came out in 2000 with Leonardo DiCaprio after the book of the same name and the similarities are a little unsettling.)

Anyway, I don't know much about Boyle, but a quick scan of reviews and the criticism was heavy. He is both praised as one of the great novelists of the last few decades and accused of foregoing any real substance for a quick laugh. Sounds smart enough. And I totally get it. For the most part, Drop City and residents are thrown under that Merry Pranksters bus at the end, a big easy-way-out no-no according to one of my creative writing teachers.

Overall, this ended up being a hurried read. I rushed through it, and I'm not sure why. It wasn't exactly to find out what would happen as the characters depth gave way to hypocrisy and vulnerability. They went from people I was getting to know to people I did not want to know.

But one thing is for sure: Boyle is the master of showing, not telling. That's harder than it sounds. During my days as a reporter, when deadlines would allow, I would go through my articles sentence by sentence turning each one from a crappy, "The board voted 5-0 ..." to a "Children will no longer be able to check books out of the library because of a unanimous vote." Again, the deadlines. Sometimes they don't allow this. And neither does 11:15 p.m.

Someday, I hope this comes more naturally. Until then, I will give the T.C. Boyle catalog another try. Any suggestions?



Boyle, did he slip?

Hearts and thoughts, they fade?

For those of you who don’t know, I grew up in Modesto, Calif. From my post, it was a fast-food, strip-mall suburbia that led to my utter boredom as a teenager.

I say “from my post” because I didn’t get the culture of the area until I returned after college for a two-year stint as a newspaper reporter. I didn’t understand that the area was feeding the country through the work of people who had risked their lives and left their families. I didn’t know about the Asian refugees who were trying to make sense of their new lives in America. (I also have friends who found true love and made happy homes there. That just wasn’t my experience.)

Some of my friends did live on farms. They wore cowboy boots and Wranglers. But I didn’t know what they did after school or during the summers. Most of us just lived in single-family track housing, one-story ranch style homes with popcorn ceilings in cul de sacs.

It was a big deal to drive over the Altamont Pass passed the windmills to San Francisco. The temperature dropped, the sky opened up and there were people with tattoos, piercings and attitudes. We knew something more was out there then. But we were isolated and frustrated, and there was nothing we could do about it. Bored out of our minds, we turned to certain recreational activities, fell in and out of love and stirred up trouble to break through the heat and dullness that was teenage life in the Central Valley.

Then there was this music that came in the early '90s. I think we discovered it as it discovered us. We did not really care, but it was dubbed grunge, and it was coming from Seattle. Until then, like those before us, we turned to the music of our parents’ generation, the Beatles, the Doors, Jimi, Pink Floyd, but it was too abstract and stood for things we weren’t involved in and couldn’t fully understand. It wasn’t ours—but until then, nothing was.

The lyrics and jarring sounds got under our skin. It was unstable and pissed off. Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit was called the anthem of an apathetic generation. We didn’t take offense.

There was a song for every one. As they kept coming, we gobbled them down from now-defunct music stores like the Wherehouse and Sam Goody. If you had shitty parents, a fucked a relationship with your mom or dad, problems fitting in, or were sick of pretending to fit in, this music spoke to you, it gave you a voice, and that felt like something when nothing else did.

I fell in love with Pearl Jam.

Sixteen years later, I relived those lyrics live in Golden Gate Park. It was one of the hottest nights of the year. It felt euphoric. Here's what it was:

It felt empowering to relive those songs and those moments so many years later, free from the issues that bound me to them in the first place, either by death, distance or resolve. I am older and wiser and less vulnerable. That night, I became acutely aware of this band's influence on the person I am today, how it helped me get through the bullshit that was growing up in a small town.

“I changed by not changing at all, small town predicts my fate...”

Except it didn’t.